Colonialism and its legacies: a highly sensitive topic, no matter how and what ones writes about it. This surely applies to the decolonization war in Indonesia and the issue of Dutch war crimes. Gert Oostindie reflects ...
Kolonialisme en de nasleep ervan: wat en hoe je er ook over schrijft, het ligt altijd gevoelig. Dat geldt zeker voor de dekolonisatieoorlog in Indonesië, en de vraag naar Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden. Gert Oostindie ...
One of the films screened at a recent conference about Indonesia’s 1965 mass killings was the Australian (Hollywood produced) The year of living dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982). David Kloos saw it for the first time...
While countries that experienced the Holocaust have reached reconciliation, Indonesians are still struggling to acknowledge the mass killings between 1965-1968. Grace Leksana reflects on conferences...
KITLV’s ever expanding “audiovisual archive of everyday life in Indonesia”, has among others produced documentaries. What it hasn’t done is engage with visual art. David Kloos sees opportunities for the future....
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’ wrote L. P. Hartley. Hidden in a park on the outskirts of Arnhem lies such a country, Bronbeek. Being both monument, veterans’ retirement home and ...
Last week more than 500 scholars convened in Vienna for the 8th conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies. Previously held every three years and from now on biannually,...
A couple of weeks ago, as part of a holiday in the Balkans, my girlfriend and I visited the Dalmatian island of Hvar in the Adriatic Sea. According to our guidebook, Hvar is “a perfect getaway for people who want to enjoy...
President Jokowi is a source of inspiration for future new leaders in the districts of Indonesia. A friend of mine on the island of Sumba in Eastern Indonesia tried to register as an independent candidate for the December ...
To be or not be (called) Dutch: is that the question…? The media can’t have it both ways: we are Dutch, or we are not. It is a fact that in times of failure, the media writes about the ‘Curaçaoan’ that lost,...